Unlikely Allies Join Together to Save the Monarch Butterfly

The world’s largest pork processor and hog producer, Smithfield Foods, Inc., is the first food company to participate in a new program with Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Roeslein Alternative Energy (RAE) to restore key prairie habitat for monarch butterflies.

Together, these three groups want to help bring back this iconic insect which has experienced a 95% population decline since the 1980s and could be listed as a threatened species by next June. The monarch is currently undergoing what is anticipated to be the largest migration in 10 years.

“We’re excited about the potential of this unique partnership to support recovery of the beloved monarch butterfly and other pollinators that rely on healthy prairie habitat,” says David Wolfe, director of conservation strategies at EDF.

In addition to providing habitat for bees, butterflies, birds, and other wildlife, Wolfe says this program offers multiple other environmental and financial benefits. The economic savings come from the benefits prairies have for helping hold water and nitrogen in the soil and reducing potential waste. There are also added revenue opportunities that come from appropriately timed harvesting of the prairie for biomass that can be used for biogas generation of clean, natural gas.

Attracted to the program’s dual benefits, Smithfield contributed $300,000 to fund the planting of native grasses and monarch-friendly native milkweed and wildflower species on 1,000 acres of land on and surrounding its hog farm in Missouri.

“We recognize that prairie is both an environmental and economic force,” says Kraig Westerbeek, senior director of Smithfield Renewables for Smithfield Foods. “While helping to protect the environment surrounding our farms, prairie is creating a new revenue opportunity as an alternative source of clean, renewable energy.”

Since the 1990s, Smithfield has explored ways to transform hog manure into renewable energy. Smithfield recently announced the nationwide expansion of these efforts through Smithfield Renewables, a platform that unifies, leads, and accelerates the company’s carbon reduction and renewable energy efforts, while helping meet its industry-leading goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2025.

In Missouri, the food company has worked with RAE since 2014 to transform manure into renewable natural gas and is now looking to prairie grass as an alternative feedstock, particularly useful during the winter months.

“Generating energy from manure, prairie, or other biomass is pretty simple,” says Rudi Roeslein, founder and president of RAE. “Manure is captured in the underfloor of the hog buildings where scrapers are used to move and flush waste to an anaerobic digester or a covered lagoon, where anaerobic digestion takes place and solids are broken down to release methane gas that is transported to a central processing facility to be converted into renewable natural gas.”

Roeslein says the harvested prairie is used to supplement hog manure as an alternative source of energy. Prior to harvest, native prairie and cover crops provide an essential ecological service as critical habitat for pollinators and wildlife.